He was really excited about it, although I wasn’t too optimistic that he would. It didn’t get washed up very often.
I told him everything that John had told me about looking for it. We squatted at a gravel pile and carefully moved rocks looking for the dull glass. We had walked for quite a while, scavenging through the little rocks. He found a piece of shiny green glass with sharp edges. He was super excited. I hated to burst his bubble, but I had to.
“Yes!” he exclaimed wiping the dirt and grime away with sea water.
“That’s junk Drew,” I explained. “Throw it back and maybe someday it won’t be.”
“What do you mean is junk? It’s pretty,” he assured me.
“It’s nothing but a broken bottle. It hasn’t been ground or polished by sand and rock, and it doesn’t have any erosion form the salt water.”
He pouted with a long face and threw it back to the sea as hard as he could.
I was beginning to lose hope when we searched our seventh pile of graveling sand. I saw the black glass.
My heart even started to pick up a few extra beats. I knew that the black glass was the rarest of all to find. I didn’t want to point it out. I wanted him to find it. He was just too excited about it.
My sneaker tapped, nervously, waiting for him to see what I was seeing. Black glass was so hard to find because it looked so much like a normal pebble. This piece however showed the frosting from time and condition. I almost pointed it out when he picked it up and brushed his thumb across it.
“How about this?” he asked, looking up to me.
I feigned ignorance and took it from his hand.
“Yes. Do you have any idea what you just found?” I asked.
He stood, curious as I held it to the sun.
“What is it?” he asked.
I handed it back. “Hold it to the sun and you will see that it’s not actually black at all.”
“It’s purple,” he said. “Do you know what it’s from?”
“My guess is an old medicine bottle, at least a hundred years old.” I explained how they were made with iron slag. Because of no refrigeration back then, they made the bottles stronger and more resistant to shattering and the harsh conditions of centuries past kept its contents from going bad.
“I found a rare piece?” he asked with a boyish grin.
“The rarest,” I assured him. “That piece may have even come all the way from Italy.”
“Wow. Really?” he asked, looking at his treasure through the sun again.
“Yup,” I smiled at his excitement.
“I’m going to have a necklace made out of it.”
“Are we done hunting sea glass?” I asked. We had been there for almost three hours. I was hot and needed something to drink.
“Yeah, but I kind of wanted to climb that rock,” he said, pointing to the peak, where the sea only let you cross at a certain time of the day.
“You’re joking,” I said, hoping that he was.
“No. Come on,” he said, placing his new treasure safely in his pocket, pulling my hand.
“Drew, we can’t climb that rock. One of us is going to get hurt.”
“I’m a doctor,” he said, ignoring me.
I didn’t laugh. This was not just a little rock. This was a cliff. There was no way we were going to make it to the top without breaking our neck.
I complained the whole walk back, protesting his mission. He won.
Drew made me go first, and I slowly and carefully chose where to put my fingers and toes. This was ridiculous. This was the type of rock that you wore harnesses and had security ropes for when you fell. We were going to fall. I was sure of it. There was no doubt in my mind. Maybe that was the plan. If I fell to my death rock climbing with my husband, he would inherit all of my fortunes. I started to panic, wondering if I was climbing my way to my death.
“Morgan?” Drew said, grunting from behind me, pulling himself higher up the sea cliff.
“What,” I answered, pulling myself up the complex elevation.
“Thank you for this. This has been the best couple days of my life.”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t planning on murdering me.
I smiled as I continued against my will to make my way to the top.
We finally made it, and my seldom used muscles quivered. Rock climbing was hard work. I couldn’t believe it when we finally sat on the edge of the cliff. We were high, really high. Our feet dangled over the dangerous cliff. It was absolutely breathtaking.
“How are we getting down?” Drew asked with a laugh.
“We’re not going down,” I assured him. “We are going up.” There was no way I was climbing back down.
He laughed. “Take your shorts off so that I can fuck you up here.”
My first thought should have been no fucking way, but it wasn’t. I looked around. There was absolutely no way anyone could see us up there, except maybe the sail boat, if they had binoculars.
“Drew?” I said in a question.
“What?” he mimicked my tone. “I will do all the work. You just get naked and lay back.”